Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @10:31AM
from the if-you-long-to-shoot-'em-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Ok, so the game is old and there was a really poor web version some years back, but some guys at Bytonic Software in Germany have done a full source port of the Quake2 engine from C to Java. It's cross platform, performs just about as fast as C and has room for further improvements according to the developer. Also, there was another game engine that ran Q3 maps that was shown recently at JavaOne. Are first generation Java games that far behind?"

But I used java once, and it took forever to print Hello World. Java is slow. Java is stupid.

Maybe this will lay waste to claims that java is slow, bloated, and sucks.

I've only recently started doing heaving Java programming, and I have to say that the language is a dream to code with (provided you use a decent IDE). There're so many classes in place already, there's nothing you can't do. I'll take it over C++ any day, and MS's MFC is horrible on comparison.

My only problem with it is the deployment; screwing with class paths and what not.

People need to realize that most of the overhead they experience with their "hello world" experience has to do with loading the classes in the beginning. Once that is done, Java performs nicely.

Sure, straight C is faster, but Java isn't the turtle everyone makes it out to be.

http://classworlds.codehaus.org/ [codehaus.org] will make your class path issues go right away. No more messing with the environment settings, no more screwing around with file paths, and only 29K of code.

Mine handles most of the services for my LAN. DHCP, DNS, and one of those clients that updates your dynamic host. Ideally it would also be a router and firewall, but I have one of those hardware dealies.

Up until a few weeks ago, when I found the majority of the parts in the trash, the box was a P 100, with 32 MB of RAM.

I'm running Slack 8 on it, and it runs perfectly well. Once upon a time, when it was the P 100, it ran Win95B, and had a security camera attached that was known by those not in the know as

I believe you missed my point entirely. Stating that Java is as fast as C because an 8 year old game has been ported to it, and it runs fast on hardware that's 8 years newer than the original game would have been played on is NOT a valid comparison in any way.

I'm not suggesting that Java sucks unless it can run on a P 233, which is how I think you took my comment.

And so Java accesses the hardware in the same manner that C or C++ accesses the hardware. So what? C relies on assembly:) The fact is that a Java coding solution, coupled with open source bindings that run on several platforms, makes a more compelling argument than a single platform C++ implementation of a game.

Where did I state that J2SE came with these APIs? The JOAL/JOGL APIs are additional packages that are required to make the Java application work on the various platforms. Just like a C++ requires a OGL or DX binding. Furthermore, why is it so difficult to believe that Java may be a perfectly acceptable language for high performance game development? In fact, depending on the application, Java applications can be FASTER than compiled C++ apps. Just one of the many benefits of compiling at runtime on the

Maybe this will lay waste to claims that java is slow, bloated, and sucks.

Well, it may lay waste to claims that Java is slow, but I think it's hard to argue that it's not bloated. And, of course, Java does suck for rapid prototyping. However, it doesn't suck so much in other contexts.

Having worked with Java, I'd say a powerful IDE like Eclipse is a requirement.

Lots of people were writing Java code long before Eclipse was released. A random text editor (Textpad) interfacing with Java1.1 was sufficient to write and compile a lot of early java code. I think that the JRE was setup so nicely that its integration into IDE's is/was so easy that everyone writing Java is now using an interactive IDE. Its not that the language requires one, its just that thats how programming is done nowadays.

Have you actually tried it though? I did this morning and it's TERRIBLY slow.

I ran it here and there was no noticable speed difference and a little benchmarking only showed it to be marginally slower -- although perhaps there would be a bigger difference on slow hardware. One thing I did notice though was that it was a bit buggy, this ranged from a few small anoyances like mouse2 and mouse3 being mixed up in the preferences so my old config file had to be edited to the fact that it always crashed on exi

MFC is wonderful compared to 6502 assembly on the Atari 800 I dare to challange that. MFC was created a long time ago, during the 16-bit era. Thats no excuse for creating bull shit.It made some compromises for speed (e.g. message map macros instead of gazillions of virtual functions). A virtual function is in most circumstances faster than a message map macro. It was created before C++ was standardized, and frankly, true!before the OO community had learned some lessons (some of which Java directly benefitted from). wrong!When the MFC was crafted there existed plenty of better alternatives.a) MacApp, Apples C++ Application FrameWorkb) TCL, Think Class Library, later Symantec, a simplyfied clone of MacAppc) Borlands Application Frameworke) ET++, a cross platform C++ GUI and Application FrameWorkf) Taligent research Frameworks, off springing from ET++g) BedRock a Borland + Apple + others attempt to make a Mac/PC cross platform Application FrameWork

Every SmallTalk environment was allready far better than MFC in the early 70ties. CLOS and other lisp derivates allready had pretty well working GUI and Application FrameWorks.

Bottom line: M$ was unable to craft a good C++ compiler. So they made a shitty incompatible slow monster with M$ specific extensions. Crafted a library relying on that extensions and sold that as "development environment".

But it provided a nice MVC framework, and handles all your menu and toolbar and other GUI stuff for you. I started with C and the Win32 API, so MFC was "a dream to code with" in comparison. I wish we would evolve from saying something sucks or is horrible, and just accept that they "are", and pick the best one for each task.

Your luck was that you did ot know better, I allways went out for one hour to hack lumber to get my agressions off, when I needed to work on a PC in 1993 till 1998 in "Windows" C++ and "Windows" libraries. Using Symnatec C++ (Walther Bright, anyone?) softened that pain a bit. The pain was further softend by using the zApp GUI libraries and not MFC. After searching 6 weeks for a good GUI Framework, the GUI of my app was made in 2 days, not with MFC, but with a true framework.

I really don't blame M$ and gates for making money and trying to dominate the market.

I blame them for throwing the whole computer age back by 30 years at least. They did so by killing so many good ideas and good companies. It took until 2000 to get again new ideas established in using and programming computers.

Now hey are copying all good ideas from unix/linux/mac os x from KDE and GNOME. If they can dominate again, by killing Sun and bying SCO, or whatever, a lot of progress will be "removed from the market" again.

Compare AppleScript versus Visual Basic. The first one is ingenious easy and the second one is ruling front end programming, but is utter crap.

[quote] And slow and bloated is okay on the server, where it won't be noticed. [/quote]

Oh, it's definitely noticable, even on the server. For our use, anyway. Unfortunately.

We're trying to run IBM's WebSphere Portal and Lotus Workplace Manager, both of which are written in Java. The web server is a dual Xeon 2.4 GHz with 4 GB RAM and SATA drivers. The database server is also a dual Xeon 2.4 GHz with 2 GB RAM. Both are running RedHat Enterprise Linux 2.1 AS. Get three people signed into Workplace,

Hey, the only time I've even seen Wolf 3D was when my family was visiting our family friends near München, probably at the same time that game was rather new -- and at that time I knew next to nothing about computers yet. But I still remember those Nazis in the game...

Well, it is of course possible that the game was an illegal copy anyway. I don't really know. At that time I didn't really understand any copyright stuff as I do now, and I couldn't discuss with the boy who played it, as I was only somet

By "ported to Managed C++" you really mean "compiled to IL to run on the CLR". There's a big difference. This code is not managed, its just unsafe code running in a VM (there was more information on this on Channel 9 last week). The radar program they created was written in managed code.

I don't care if it's running in Java C D E or bloody Z, as long as the game runs well and looks playable (AKA not shooting green blocks to make red blocks appear with a black block and various brownish walls. ).

No gamers is going to go "Doom 3 running on Java!? I'm so not buying that!" or "Doom 3 is running only on C++ I'm not playing that!". No one but the coders themselvs and the modders will truely care what it's written in as long as it runs okay and looks good.

But a developer looking to deploy to more than one platform without having to port the app. will sure as hell care. Look what happened to the NWN launch. If they had used Java for the game vs C++ then you would have been able to play on your Linux box instead of waiting for 1+ years for it to be ported to Linux. I agree that a game player could care less, so long as it looks good (and more importantly plays well), but if more developers moved to a true cross platform technology wouldn't the Mac/Linux pla

I'm a Mac user, I care. Too often Mac games come out years late and with dozens of bugs added in just for the fun of it. If the development houses would either do as blizzard does, and develop quality software, or at least write in java so I get the same bugs as everyone else, I'll be happy.

This is after all the bottom line. I don't want to wait 4 years for a buggy Mac port to come out, and I don't want to use windows at home just so I can run the latest games. If more people went this route then it's likely that there would be more high quality games for everyone. Just write it once, release the java for OS X, Linux, BSD, Windows, whatever, and then use something like GCJ to turn your java code into a good executable for XBox or PS2. Of course I'll hear the C coders say "But C can be portable." and it can, but only if you know what you're doing and actually put in the effort. History has shown that very few people fall into this category, so we need java.

I'm no java expert ( I'm a rabid portable C/C++ guy... ) but it looked like the opengl bindings loaded by webstart weren't compatible. Could be a packaging error (x86 native JNI binary?), or it could be any number of things.

Well put. When you care about technology for its own sake -- rather than how it can solve problems for you -- you're taking it too seriously. This applies for operating systems, programming languages, text editors, etc.

but what about when Quake2 came out?
The code runs at about 60% performance on today's machines. So when Quake2 was released, Quake2 Java would have broken my machine, as it barely ran the orignal Quake2 version.
Java can offer portability over platforms but games often push hardware to its limits and so may raise the bar on minimum system specs.

Sort of....10% of released games really stress modern systems that a real gamer has (D3/HL2/FarCry/Halo/etc.) And when did a game ever run with the "mininum requirements" that you were happy with?;) Hey, you can play Q3 on a GeForce 3, so don't buy that new graphics card. Could Sims have been done in Java? Could WarCraft 3?:)

Q2 used to run fine with 64 megs of ram while these guys are probably using 256 or 512mb when performing these benchmarks (they don't say). Fine on a PC where RAM is cheap, but remember that current generation consoles still have 24-64mb.

Also, Q2 was written for a time with significantly different CPU:GPU performance ratios (eg before Hardware transform & lighting) so the benchmarks don't mean much.

I have seen JOGL and I am quite impressed with it, I wouldn't be suprised to see multithreaded Java bein

Java can offer portability over platforms but games often push hardware to its limits and so may raise the bar on minimum system specs.

One interesting thing would be whether it can all be trimmed down enough to run on a telephone - and porting it to java makes that possible. Slow processor, not much memory, but 128x128 pixels means you can get away with a lot of hacks and still get a good image.

The important thing to know is that the majority of your performance gains are obtained by scheduling the hardware intelligently, keeping the CPU and GPU well balanced, i.e. busy at all times. And of course, that your tight loops are really optimized, that you do not fragment memory, etc. That, for the most part, has nothing to do with the language your using, but simply with your programming skills.

By the way, what hardware have they tested on to claim that performance is similar? If it's modern hardware, then of course it will run at 60+ fps no matter what.

What's more, I would guess the bulk of the work on the CPU for quake2 consisted in traversing the BSP tree, building the scene (with transforms still being performed on the CPU at that time) and collision detection. The rest is taken care by the graphics hardware so that's totally independant of the language you've used.

There is one thing that bothers me with Java though. You never know when the garbage collection will be performed. Sure, recent virtual machines make it possible to perform garbage collection in smaller but more frequent iterations so you don't halt the system for a few seconds like early virtual machines would do. But still, if you're in a tight loop with your data and instruction cache perfectly populated, and all of a sudden the garbage collection kicks in, then your cache is toast and data will have to be refetched to it when execution resumes. That would result in a horrible performance loss provided you are already really close to the machine's limit. Also, what I'm saying is only pertinent on a console with no (or almost no) OS, because on any PC operating system, your process can be interrupted at any time by the various system tasks that are running, so the garbage collection interrupting your tight loop would only be one of many possible interruptions.

I don't believe java can be as fast as native code, although probably extremely close. And sure, a good java compiler will generate faster code then a crappy C++ compiler.

Another thing I don't like about java is that you have no control over memory (not that i know of, maybe some recent VM extensions allow you to have some control over that?). I really like to be able to give different sets of alloc/dealloc routines to the different subsystems in a game. A subsystem that is known to perform very small allocations/deallocations very often could be passed alloc/free routines that are customized to its use so that memory fragmentation is kept to a minimum. If such a component was allowed to get memory from the same pool then your other subsystems, it would wreck havoc on your memory.

Anyway, it's not such a good idea to compare java and C++ (or whatever other languages) on a system where resources are abundant (PCs).

By the way, Jak & Daxter for the ps2 is written in a lisp derived language (GOAL), yet that game outperforms and looks better then almost everything else on the ps2. Yet lisp is not perceived as a high performance language. But the people at Naughty Dog have developed their very own compiler that is extremely specific to their needs (see their gamasutra post-mortem, very cool read) So, it goes to show that the notion of performance shouldn't be tied with a language, but rather with that language's runtime & compilers.

Sorry, my use of the word native was misplaced. I meant couldn't be as fast as a language that's closer to machine code.

When you write code in C, it translates pretty naturally into machine code.

With C++, some unexpected stuff can happen. Implicit conversions, temporary objects, late binding when resolving virtual methods, etc. But if you know what you're doing, you can still pretty much avoid the C++ gotchas.

In Java, there is even more unexpected stuff that happens behind the scenes, and that's sorta of

The whole point of games in java is abstracting. The CPU power and memory size has arrived to a point where you can afford to write high level multiplatform code based on a VM and run smoothly. This may not be for the latest eye candy 120 FPS 3d live action game, but it can be. As the JVM gives better support to access 3d native engines there's a huge incentive to code games in java. I think SUN is putting lots of money on this and they seem successful. Imagine the huge amount of code you don't have write o

if you're in a tight loop with your data and instruction cache perfectly populated, and all of a sudden the garbage collection kicks in, then your cache is toast and data will have to be refetched to it when execution resumes.

Actually, in the more recent JVMs garbage collection improves cache coherency through memory locality - newly allocated memory is likely to be close to already allocated memory, and thus in the cache.

The same techniques can be exploited to cause stack allocation instead of heap allocation, another speed win.

As far as compilation goes, Java compilers don't extensively optimize. Java optimizations typically occur at run time, which gives you a far greater range of possible strategies than the static compile time optimizations that are possible with C. Some people now think that run time optimization will eventually lead Java to be a higher performance language tham C.

I don't believe java can be as fast as native code, although probably extremely close.

It will be interesting to see how this works out, I'm betting that for a significant class of problems, large general purpose software, Java's runtime optimization will make it a clear winner.

For small programs that can fit in a CPU cache though, I think Java will be slower to overtake C, if ever.

There is one thing that bothers me with Java though. You never know when the garbage collection will be performed. Sure, recent virtual machines make it possible to perform garbage collection in smaller but more frequent iterations so you don't halt the system for a few seconds like early virtual machines would do. But still, if you're in a tight loop with your data and instruction cache perfectly populated, and all of a sudden the garbage collection kicks in, then your cache is toast and data will have to

What really bothers me is how rarely (if ever) a Java or C# program will release memory back to the system. It seems that they just take more and more resources away from the system and never release it back. This combined with a lazy garbage collection and programmers that don't worry about memory makes many Java programs horribly bad neighbors to other processes running on a dekstop.

And how exactly does a C/C++ program release memory to the system?By calling strunbrk() or what?Future operation systems,

AFAIK, freeing the memory marks it as available for the OS to reuse elsewhere.

The fact that many OS's will not *actually* release the memory straight away if there isn't much pressure on memory in order to reduce memory fragmentation and speed up allocations for the program doesn't alter the fact that it is at least available - you don't have a second operating system running inside the main OS.

AFAIK, freeing the memory marks it as available for the OS to reuse elsewhere.

Yeah, but that is wrong:D

Freeing the memory with free() makes it available again to: the process/the application. The "swap space" a process uses gets onyl reclaimed when the process terminates.

Your original argument was something about Java and freeing memory. So while the Java language don't has a "free" keyword or function, the Java VM uses garabge collection to support Java programs. And? Guess what, the VM uses free() t

What really bothers me is how rarely (if ever) a Java or C# program will release memory back to the system. It seems that they just take more and more resources away from the system and never release it back.

I suppose next you're going to complain that they mmap too much memory when they start up. The fact is this is done to get the best performance out of the VM systems of modern OSs. The vast majority of garbage-collected runtimes do not release memory given by the OS based on the very safe assumption t

There is one thing that bothers me with Java though. You never know when the garbage collection will be performed...Actually on mobile phones, where you're working with extremely limited hardware and very little RAM, it's common practice to force the garbage collector to run regularly. I usually call the gc in the central game loop to prevent "hitches" during play as a large(ish) block is freed up randomly.

Since just about every game I've written is under 30k in size (including graphics and sound), and mo

There is one thing that bothers me with Java though. You never know when the garbage collection will be performed.

Here's a hint: it happens after you've allocated too much memory. Even if you are so deprived that you can't even turn the garbage collector on and off, if you don't allocate in your inner loop, the garbage collector won't kick in! Who would have thought? In Java allocation is very easy to control (a big reason for this has to do with it's separation of built-in types and classes), and as long

Now I haven't used java since 2000, but have they fixed the seemingly random garbage collection? I remember seeing a raytraced wolfy3d java demo years back, and garbage collection would make it go to a stand still at random intervals.

I think the point many people are trying to make is that while java used to be slow, it's better. With linux becoming more popular, I think java could get more popular. If a developer can compile a program and have it "just work" on mac, windows and linux, then he can focus on making the program better, not more compatible. I've worked with java and it's pretty easy to use. Version 1.5 (or now 5.0) is supposed to have some nice features to make it easier.

Or do it like IDsoft and make most of your game be ran by the engine, which is then more simple to port. I can compile a qwprogs.dat out of some quakec and have it ran by any quakeworld engine, regardless of OS, arch, or even endian type. Of course the engine still has to be ported, but if you stick to using portable technology(OpenGL, OpenAL, etc) thats a simple matter of recompiling.

Auriga3D is an advanced real time game engine built on an extensible plugin framework. Presently, the engine is geared towards BSP style rendering popular in FPS games such as Quake3 & Doom3. In the future there may be additional plugins created that allows other rendering techniques such as height maps to be accessible. A goal of Auriga3D is to allow independent developers the ability to develop new games with existing content creation technology.

Ummm. What are all those Windows.dlls and Linux.so's doing in the distrib? I'm assuming they're for the graphics stuff... It seems you could probably get JavaScript to manage the game play if you offloaded all the heavy graphics lifting to compiled native libraries like this seems to do.

The article says "Runs somewhere between 60 and 85% of the speed of the original", and this is on modern hardware.

Let's see how it performs on hardware that was actually used to play Quake 2 before we start lying about how fast java is compared to the native code. When the hardware in question is capable of pulling 300 frames per second, it's pretty damn likely it's not even being used to its full potential. Even the K6-2 machine was getting near 60fps. The only people who got 60fps in Quake 2 when it came out were the people with monster machines.

Sorta. There are numerous games out already that are based on Java. Pretty much all of Popcap [popcap.com] uses Java. Java is also used as a scripting language for several games (sorry, no links), as an alternative to Python, Lisp, C++, Lua or any other interpretive language (or home-brewed language).

However, it will be a very long time (if ever) before developers switch over to Java as their language of choice. Why? Because it is only the last generation or two of games that have started to use C++.

Game developers are constantly trying to push the edges of what can be done within current hardware limitations. The problem with languages that do a lot for us is that... They do a lot for us. Which is nice a lot of times. But always seems to happen at the most inconvenient time (like when we're doing matrix operations, or animating units).

There are numerous games out already that are based on Java. Pretty much all of Popcap uses Java.

There are games and then there are games:) One should make difference between traditional rich games (sold in boxes at store shelves) and small games (browser games and mobile J2ME games). Popcap seem to be designing the latter. The amount of work for browser games is not comparable to rich games. Browser games are simple, taking maximum few months to develop. Rich games cost average 5 million dollars [dfcint.com], have h

Tr3B (Robert Beckebans IIRC) has written a Q2 clonein Python some time ago, and currently hacks onqrazor-fx aka http://xreal.sf.net/ which is a Q2with graphics quality in the range of Q3 or evenDoom 3.

The first commercial Java game was Tom Clancy's Politika, published in 1997. This was followed by Tom Clancy's Ruthless.com in 1998, and Shadow Watch in 1999. I'm not exactly sure what the comment above means, but personally I consider those games first generation. They were burnt onto CD and sold in stores like many a C or C++ title.

Whereas some C/C++ games have used Java as a scripting language, the approach of these games was to use Java for the core game loop and game logic, and to write new native libraries for the performance heavy stuff like graphics and sound. For Politika, we wrote our own movie and sound code (for both PC and Mac) because Java didn't have very good support at that point. We almost got some faster and leaner 2D graphics support in there too, but ran out of time. This approach was written up for a paper (Writing Java Games: How We Did It), which was presented at CGDC 1998.

In Ruthless.com, the native libraries were improved and the 2D graphics support was added. Basically a wrapper was created around DirectX using JNI. In addition, the whole game was compiled to native code instead of using the Java VM. This whole system hit its peak with Shadow Watch, which is an awesome little turn-based strategy game; think Rainbow Six Tactics.

So this has been possible for many years -- it's just that nobody's carried it on. The big accomplishment here is that they may be using only Sun libraries, which only means that Sun has finally gotten their act together and put out well-optimized code.

Can anyone explain what the shared libraries and dlls in the compiled distribution are for? Is the Quake 2 part of the code 100% java, and are the shared libs just wrappers around the OpenGL libraries, or what?

If so, why does there have to be a wrapper shared library created to interface with the opengl libraries?

This isn't native swing and double buffered Jpanels...erm...more like sticking a 302 in a Ford Pinto and still calling it a Pinto. Nonetheless, still an impressive port...props-n-hos to the Jake2 crew.

is it possible to write mods for jake2 like for quake2? is the code still separated in game engine and game? it would be great to write the mods in java. as a designer its hard to learn c to create your visualizations.

And I'm a grown up, so I can *decide* if I want to use pointers, gotos, or multiple inhieritance. If you don't like these features in C++ THEN DONT USE THEM.

We may be all grown-ups, but its a sad fact of IT development that we all make mistakes, and pointers aren't an optional extra in C++, they are fundamental to the way data is stored. The use of C/C++ has been a disaster in many areas of IT, leading to buffer overruns, buggy software and virus susceptibility. (I remember spending days trying to trac

>Unless you are writing OS kernels, device drivers>or hardware controllers its hard to see why>anyone would feel the need to use raw memory>pointers in an application.

Lets see, what have I done in the last few months programming games:*Needed to get a raw memory pointer to PS2 framebuffer.*Needed to align 16byte structures in memory from a non-aligned binary file.*Optmised a matrix-math function to use GameCube paired singles FP instruction.

Try loading a Doom3 or FarCry Level:) The start up time has to do with object loading and setting up the scene. C++ or Java.
Also, JAVA IS NOT INTERPRETED. It is COMPILED. It is just compiled at runtime.